Modernization potential of the liberal project and expectations of citizens in the post-Soviet Russia

The article deals with the issue of positioning the modernizing potential of the liberal project in the post-Soviet Russia and its dissonance with expectations of the majority of Russian citizens. The article presents the contradictions on such viewpoints as civil society, constitutional and social state. The author concludes that the consensus of social and elitist expectations were based not on the liberal model, but on the hope of the elite and citizens that the provider of the secure present and sustainable future in our country is a strong, politically centralized state. One of the main theses of the liberal-democratic modernization was the reduction of the state role in the economy and other spheres of social life. Such suggestion, in spite of its internal logic, did not take into account certain inertia of the political process, that in the Soviet system traditionally the major owner was the state, not society. In practice, the implementation of the formula «democracy, private property and the market will put everything on its place» has led to significant conceptual and ideological contradictions.